To her prodigious relief, he was not moved thereby.
He had a letter from Ryde in his pocket, apprising him on what day his
dear Julia was to become Mrs. Brotherton; and he was in an elastic humor
because of his late success--just in the humor when a man of mature age
and sense puts his trust in Fortune and expects to go on succeeding.
Perhaps he had not consciously endeavored to detach his thoughts from
Julia, but a shade of retrospective reverie had fallen upon her image,
and if she was lost to him, Elizabeth Fairfax was, of all other women he
had known, the one he would prefer to take her place. He was quite sure
of this, though he was not in love. The passive resistance that he had
encountered from Miss Fairfax had not whetted his ardor much, but there
was the natural spirit of man in him that hates defeat in any shape; and
from his air and manner his sister deduced that in the midst of
uncertainties shared by his best friends he still kept hold of hope.
Whether he might put his fate to the touch that night would, he said,
depend on opportunity--and impulse.
Such was the attitude of parties on the famous occasion of Lady
Angleby's ball to celebrate her nephew's successful election. Miss
Fairfax had been a great help to Miss Burleigh in arranging the fruit
and the flowers, and if Mrs. Betts had not been peremptory in making her
rest a while before dinner, she would have been as tired to begin with
as a light heart of eighteen can be.
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